


cabbage roses & coffee

by verity



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/F, Remix, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:38:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly buys her own refrigerator. She covers it with cat magnets. </p><p>(cis!f!Sherlock/Molly)</p>
            </blockquote>





	cabbage roses & coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Leading Question For A Lady](https://archiveofourown.org/works/451074) by [missyvortexdv (Purpleyin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purpleyin/pseuds/missyvortexdv), [Purpleyin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purpleyin/pseuds/Purpleyin). 



> thanks to billtheradish for betaing & Elena for Britpicking!
> 
> this is a remix of Purpleyin's _A Leading Question For A Lady_ written for round three of [Sherlock Remix](http://sherlock-remix.livejournal.com/).

She makes Molly coffee.  
  
She buys Molly a vibrator.  
  
She gives Molly a flat.  
  
Not in that order.  
  


—

  
  
Technically, Sherlock doesn't own 221C. However, she paid for the wallpaper, the new carpet, the updated fixtures. Mrs. Hudson went in with her on the oven. "It's a good investment, dear," she said to Sherlock when they were looking at ranges online. "What do you think about this one? Stainless steel, looks very nice."  
  
Sherlock glanced over. "Flaw in the broiler drawer, two house fires so far, pending recall," she said. "Next?"  
  


—

  
  
Molly paints over the wallpaper herself, doesn't bother to hire professionals or even take it down. The flocking wilts under the gallons of primer and low-emission paint in robin's egg blue that nevertheless fail to restore the wall to an even plane. Sherlock can see the raised pattern in direct sunlight, can feel the uneven texture by her fingers when she gropes for the light switch. Molly's furniture is a mix of depressing prefab and scuffed wood that belongs at a parish jumble sale; her secondhand couch is covered in cabbage roses. She hangs lace curtains in the windows. Assembled, the place is cozy and inviting.  
  
Sherlock never goes downstairs.  
  


—

  
  
Everything about Molly seems cozy and inviting to the casual observer. It's easy to see what appealed to Moriarty, who saw Molly's warmth and lack of guile and missed her intellect and steel spine. Sherlock overlooked those, too, at first: a novice mistake, but one Sherlock rectified. Moriarty is dead now; Sherlock is alive.  
  
These facts are not unrelated.  
  


—

  
  
Still her blogger and always her friend, John delights in and despairs of Sherlock in a way that he attributes to the magnetic force exerted by Sherlock's personality. She attracts and repels; always has. John put up with her. Then he married, moved out—not out of her life, but out of _theirs_. "I'll die on my own," Sherlock threatened. "You'll install a bloody smoke alarm, learn to share a fridge," John said. "And I'm taking my gun."  
  
Molly buys her own refrigerator. She covers it with cat magnets.  
  


—

  
In a few months, Sherlock is eating courgettes and casseroles of her own volition, spending late nights at Barts and in her own makeshift lab with unprotesting company. Molly complains less than John ever did when Sherlock scares off her dates (and she never means to—well, she always means to, she just can't see how anyone else's need for Molly could be as pressing as her own, there's no replacement for Molly just as there's none for John—) and after a while, she stops complaining at all. When Sherlock costumes for a case, Molly is bolder, looking for longer before she glances away, cheeks flushed.   
  
That's a problem Sherlock can solve.  
  


—

  
  
Sherlock overlooked some important things about Molly at first; it turns out that Sherlock overlooked some important things about herself, too. She trusts Molly. She likes Molly's company. Disturbingly, Sherlock finds that she likes pleasing Molly, too. So she learns Molly's takeaway order, buys her a vibrator, makes her coffee. Sherlock's no good at that sort of thing, but she looks it up on the internet, finds she can improvise a drip brewer with an Erlenmeyer flask, a funnel, a filter, and some of the grounds Molly keeps in the freezer compartment. She tops the whole thing off with two sugars and transfers the contents of the flask to a mug.  
  
"Thanks," Molly says, giving Sherlock a quizzical look that's slowly replaced by a smile.  
  


—

  
Sherlock buys Molly a Christmas gift: vibrating pleasure pants, with a remote Sherlock keeps for herself. They're pink.  
  
Maybe she's getting the hang of this.


End file.
